


a sycamore tree, as sick as can be

by kimaracretak



Category: The Haunting of Hill House - Shirley Jackson
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Ambiguously Canon Compliant, Blood Magic, F/F, POV First Person, Past Canonical Character Sorta-Death, Post-Canon, Supernatural Elements, Unreliable Narrator, girls and the houses they become out of love, houses and the girls they love and eat, things that are made right but not better by love, uneven temporalities
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-16
Updated: 2018-12-16
Packaged: 2019-09-20 02:13:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17013606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kimaracretak/pseuds/kimaracretak
Summary: There's no risk of a picnic here, nothing it needs to keep me safe from. I go out into our building's tiny back garden and tilt my head back to see the green-feathered branches of the single tree brush the sky. Dear Nell is in a tree now, I think, and then I laugh at the absurdity, because Nell is a house, of course.[ Or: Theodora, and what it means to remember the time when it all could have gone better, and how things are still right in the end. ]





	a sycamore tree, as sick as can be

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Luna](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Luna/gifts).



> After the sun has gone  
>  _A sycamore tree_  
>  _As sick as can be_  
>  Third day's the unsettling one  
> A sycamore tree  
> A trick and a treat
> 
> — '[I've Been Walking (Part 2)'](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtRfazKdka8), Gazpacho

All would have been well were it not for the picnic, and how we ran away from it.

This is the lie I tell myself long after I have admitted it's a silly thing to think, why, it makes me even sillier than Nell to keep on saying that all would have been well were it not for the picnic after it was clear that there was something quite else happening at Hill House.

But the picnic is what I return to. It is the picnic, I think, that could have changed things for the better. All would have been much simpler if Eleanor had simply sat down and talked, talked to someone other than that awful house.

Eleanor, of course, was no good at talking by her own admission. And, of course, that was another one of Nell's lies, the ones I always took just moments too long to catch onto because they were so trivial I never would have expected Nell to bother.

Never lie about the little things, that's how I've always gone through life. Little things made up foundations, and only once you were stood on solid foundation could you lie about the big things, the ones that mattered.

I, of course, had lied about the picnic.

When I go back to it in my head, the clear grey day and the irrerepressible brook in the background, I'm not sure why I screamed. A test for Nell, perhaps, to see if she would run —

( _No, Theo, you already knew Nell would always run, she was so very good at it, and she looked so lovely whenever she was at it, her furrowed brow and flying hair and the quicksilver black flash of her boots defiantly alive amongst the wooded green._ )

— or to get back at her for that perfectly awful stunt with the bloodied clothes —

( _But magic always demanded blood, Theo, you remembered well how you'd prick your fingers in the laboratory and watch the droplets form the shape of the cards so far away, could you really ever begrudge Nell that blood, even if you didn't know where it came from?_ )

There are not so many letters between lie and love, anyway.

The truth is that Eleanor had a house's eye by the end, and Hill House was not accustomed to looking behind it. They both knew exactly how the clouds would come down. They both knew they only had to stand guard, and menace all who came forward, and the things behind would stay quiet, stay safe. And I — well, I didn't quite know that, but I knew that I was on the outside of whatever they were growing into. I knew there was only one way to be sure, one way to see if I would be bringing home a girl (a cousin, a sister, a maybe-lover) or something else.

And I — oh, I only wished I could stop looking back. Could stop knowing what was behind me, could turn my face to the sun and see only light. But I could no more do that than stop knowing about the cards, and if I had, well, I never would have come to Hill House in the first place, would never have known about sweet Nell and the sweeter picnic.

I couldn't do that. Even now, knowing what happened, knowing the end — or something like an end — I can't regret any of it. A better person would regret, but I think Lucy was right, during the fight that made me go, and Nell was right too:

I've given up on trying to be better.

Sugar rots when mixed with blood. Lucy could explain the science of it, with all her artist's chemistry, but I only need to know what I cannot stop seeing: Eleanor, Nellie, Nell, bloodless, magic, alone.

Alone without even the family from the picnic. The picnic. It's a hard though to hold in my mind, for all that I remember the picnic so well I think, sometimes, that I've never left the clearing where I first saw it. I'll be at the table, and look down at my plate and see not Lucy's paint-spattered turquoise tablecloth but red and white checkered gingham. Trip over a loose floorboard and hear the dog whine in protest as if I've just stepped on his tail.

Layers over layers, like film shot one time too many, and I'm not sure which picture I'm in. Which one I want to be in. Nell and Lucy — there should be more differences.

I breath a little more shallowly, those badly photographed nights, kiss Lucy a little more deeply. Her mouth is hot and familiar, her fingers so very clever, and it's supposed to make things better. I let Lucy think it does, because I can't bear losing her either, but all it usually does is send me back to the nights in the blue room, Eleanor pressed against me in bed, holding hands while Hill House cried to get in. My apartment would never have such terrible manners. Lucy thinks hand-holding is for teenagers on their first dates, she has better things to do with hands.

There's no risk of a picnic here, nothing it needs to keep me safe from. I go out into our building's tiny back garden and tilt my head back to see the green-feathered branches of the single tree brush the sky. Dear Nell is in a tree now, I think, and then I laugh at the absurdity, because Nell is a house, of course.

And then I stop and sit down silently and let the blades of grass poke at my thighs through the rips in my stockings, because while both of those things are true Nell is also, undeniably, dead, and that feels like a wonderfully inappropriate thing to be laughing about.

Nell isn't in this tree though, and I think, usually, that that makes it alright, or at least it lessens the knot of guilt that sometimes crawls around my throat on nights when Lucy goes to sleep too early.

Didn't take Eleanor to the picnic. Didn't take Nell home. Am not going back to visit but am not very good at staying with Lucy either.

I press my back against the tree, feel the bark catch in all the twisted stitches of my sweater. Navy blue, nowdays. Better to hide in Hill House, better to stand out dark against all the light — so much light! — in the apartment. But I can't hide from herself, from the knowledge that it was me and Nell and all the light we shouldn't've tried to be that roused Hill House's anger.

So maybe it's too late. I don't think time has moved quite right since I've come back - the gingham cloth is all spread out, but the family isn't here yet. No one for me to sit with, especially since Lucy's busy setting up the new gallery.

Maybe that's why I'm here. Maybe that's why I'm writing this. The fence is taller now, and soon I will brave it to see Nell's tree and leave this with her.

The tree bark pulling at my sweater is insistent, as strong and clever and tight as Nell's hand in mine, as vicious a promise as Eleanor's fists against their bedroom door. I can't walk back to my building's door without stepping on the picnic cloth, which seems unbearably cruel.

The fence is rusted now, more than it should have been in just the month I've been away. The girl is at my side now, and she has Nell's face. Eleanor's. I haven't missed her, Nell, not like I've missed you.

"Theo," she says to me, "Don't you want to come home?"

 _I do_ , I want to say to her, but the words that come out of my mouth instead are, "I am home."

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Yuletide, Luna! I have been thinking about how Theo's relationship to the picnic might mirror Eleanor's relationship to Hill House since I finished the novel, and your prompts inspired me to explore it here. I hope you enjoyed!


End file.
